They Offered You the Division the Week the Numbers Went Red

Evidence Review · The Reading Room, Vol. 122 · 8 min read · what twenty years of research found about women promoted into a crisis, and what to ask before you accept one

The “glass cliff” names something many senior women recognise before they have the word for it: the big job arrives, and it arrives on fire. The research behind the phrase is real, more modest than the headlines suggest, and useful in a very practical way.

The short answer: the glass cliff is the finding that women, and members of other under-represented groups, are somewhat more likely to be appointed to leadership roles when an organisation is already in trouble, which makes those roles riskier. A 2020 meta-analysis of 74 studies found a small but real effect, stronger in some sectors than others.¹ It does not mean every offer is a trap. It means a crisis promotion deserves harder questions before you accept it.

The email came on a Tuesday. Would she step up and lead the division, effective the first of the month. The previous head had left “to spend time with family” three weeks after the quarterly numbers went red, two of the senior team had already resigned, and the integration that was supposed to save the business was eight months late. Everyone said congratulations. One colleague, a woman who had been around a long time, said it differently. “Make sure they give you what you need before you say yes.”

She said yes first. Most of us do.

Jump to: What it is · What the evidence shows · Why it happens · What it costs · Five questions before yes · Questions women actually ask

What is the glass cliff?

It is the second obstacle after the glass ceiling. The ceiling keeps women out of senior roles. The cliff describes what can happen when they get through: the role they are offered is more likely to be precarious, with a higher chance of failure that has little to do with their ability.

The idea started with a newspaper article. In 2003 a piece in The Times suggested that companies with women on their boards performed worse. Michelle Ryan and her colleague Alex Haslam, then at the University of Exeter, looked at the same kind of data and asked a different question: what was happening to these companies before the women arrived? Their answer, published in 2005, was that women tended to be appointed after a period of poor performance.² The women had not caused the decline. They had been handed it.

Is the glass cliff real? What the evidence shows

Yes, with honest limits. In 2020 Ryan and colleagues pooled 74 independent studies conducted between 2004 and 2019 into three meta-analyses: real-world appointment records, experiments asking people who seemed suitable to lead, and experiments asking people whom they would actually pick.¹

All three gave some support for a glass cliff for women.¹ In the real-world records the effect was small and depended on the domain: it showed up more clearly in some kinds of organisation than in others.¹ In the experiments, the effect appeared when participants judged a single candidate, but not when they saw a man and a woman side by side.¹ The pattern also extended to members of under-represented racial and ethnic groups.¹

The research is not unanimous. Later analyses have argued that in corporate management specifically the evidence is weaker and more mixed, and at least one experiment found no effect at all. That is worth knowing. The defensible reading is not “women are always set up to fail.” It is that crisis appointments go to women somewhat more often than chance would predict, in some places more than others, and that being aware of it changes what you should negotiate.

A crisis role usually lands on top of everything you already carry, at work and at home. Before you decide, it helps to see the full load on one page. Start here.

Why are women offered the riskiest leadership roles?

Several explanations have been tested, and none covers everything. One is the stereotype sometimes summarised as “think crisis, think female”: the idea that a struggling organisation needs warmth, communication and people skills, qualities stereotypically linked with women. Another is signalling: appointing an unexpected leader tells shareholders and the press that change is happening. A third is simpler and less flattering. When the job looks bad, fewer insiders with strong networks want it, and the candidate with less protection is the one left to say yes.

The 2020 authors noted that the stereotype explanation struggles to account for the effect among racial and ethnic minorities, which suggests more than one mechanism is at work.¹ For you, the mechanism matters less than the pattern: a role offered in a crisis is a role where support needs checking, not assuming.

What does a glass cliff role cost the woman who takes it?

The obvious cost is professional: a turnaround that does not turn gets attributed to the leader, and the story people remember is “she ran it when it failed.” The less obvious cost is the one this journal writes about most. Crisis roles run on discretionary effort. The weekends, the extra calls, the staff who need holding together, the board that needs reassuring. That load is rarely written into the job description, and it falls on a woman who often already carries most of the household’s planning, as we set out in the mental load.

There is also a quieter pattern. Women in rescue roles often absorb the work no one else will do, the team morale, the clean-up, the tasks that keep things running and do nothing for a career. We looked at that in the email asked for volunteers. On a glass cliff it multiplies.

How do you avoid the glass cliff? Five questions before yes

You do not need to refuse the role. You need to negotiate it while you still have leverage, which is the moment before you accept. Afterwards, every request looks like a complaint. The practice is the five-question cliff check, and it fits on an index card.

1. Why is this role open now? Ask for the honest version, not the press release.

2. What resources come with it? Budget, headcount and the specific people you can bring or replace.

3. What can I change without asking? Mandate is the difference between leading a turnaround and managing a decline.

4. What does success look like, and by when? Get the timeline in writing, with the starting position recorded.

5. Who is my sponsor, and what happens if it takes longer? A named person above you, and the terms if the plan slips.

If the answers are good, take it with your eyes open. If they are vague, that is your answer too, and you are allowed to say “I’d like to do this, and here is what I need to do it well.” That sentence is not ungrateful. It is the one the people who survive these roles tend to say.

If you are already on the cliff and feeling it, you are not alone in dreading work you are good at, and that has its own piece: why do I dread a job I’m still good at.

Questions women actually ask about this

What is an example of the glass cliff?

The original study looked at large UK companies and found women were more often appointed to boards after a period of poor share performance.² A common example since is a woman being named chief executive or division head shortly after a scandal, a failed merger or heavy losses, when the odds of success are already low.

Is the glass cliff real?

A 2020 meta-analysis of 74 studies found evidence for it, though the effect was small and varied by sector and study design.¹ Some later research in corporate settings is more mixed. The fairest summary is that it is a real pattern, not a universal rule.

Who coined the term glass cliff?

Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam coined it in 2005, in research at the University of Exeter responding to a newspaper claim that women on boards hurt company performance.²

How is the glass cliff different from the glass ceiling?

The glass ceiling is the barrier that keeps women from reaching senior roles. The glass cliff describes the precarious nature of some of the roles women are offered once they do get through, when the organisation is already struggling and failure is more likely.

For the bigger picture of the invisible work that sits underneath a senior woman’s day, start with our guide: the mental load: why you carry what no one else notices.

On the research. The pooled effect is small, varies by sector, and appeared in experiments only when candidates were judged one at a time. Some later studies in corporate management, including an incentivised hiring experiment, found weak or no evidence. Most of the research covers boards and executives in Europe, Australia and North America. The five questions are a practical response to the pattern, not a tested intervention.

References
1. Morgenroth T, Kirby TA, Ryan MK, Sudkämper A. The who, when, and why of the glass cliff phenomenon: A meta-analysis of appointments to precarious leadership positions. Psychological Bulletin. 2020;146(9):797–829.
2. Ryan MK, Haslam SA. The glass cliff: Evidence that women are over-represented in precarious leadership positions. British Journal of Management. 2005;16(2):81–90.

Written by Tomasz Nowak for Blue Leaf Journal.